


Hand over Fist

by eponymous_rose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 18:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8633704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: The turn of the seasons: terror, transition, turmoil, tranquility. Four times Vex’ahlia keeps watch over what’s hers. Written for the Critical Role Reverse Bang. Features art by the amazing TriaElf9.





	

**i.**

"Having trouble?"

Vex grits her teeth and makes another swing at the tree branch just above her head. This time, her hand connects firmly with the slippery bark, but she also jams her finger into it at a weird angle, so overall it's perhaps not the best move she's made all day. Swallowing a yelp of pain, she adjusts her grip, digs her fingers in, and hoists herself up, scraping her knee in the process.

"You're always so graceful," her brother calls up, and okay, right now her main goal in climbing this tree is to get to a firm enough footing that she can flip him off with impunity.

Knees trembling with the effort, she rests a hand against the mossy trunk and pushes slowly to her feet. Beside her, clinging to a branch almost twice as big around as his little bear-cub paws can reach, Trinket grumbles a complaint. An adorable complaint. "I know, buddy," she says, under her breath. "You're doing great. Bears are really good at climbing trees, I promise."

"Hey," says Vax, still loitering just below her, "you know you're not especially well-hidden up there."

"You're going to need support from above, brother, but the way you're acting I might just find something better to do with my time." She curses when her right boot skids slightly across the rain-dampened branch underfoot, but manages to keep her balance. Wobbling, barely daring to breathe, she pulls her bow from over her shoulder and nocks an arrow. "Hah! Told you it'd work."

Vax kicks a pile of moldy leaves. "There isn't exactly an abundance of foliage left to hide behind. Besides, everything's going to be fine."

He's nervous, she realizes. She hates that she can tell when he's lying. "That'll make it easier for me to aim." She crouches, adjusts her grip on the arrow. Fletching looks a lot less ragged this time around. Good. "I mean, he's just out here to take the artifact he hired you to steal. Simple transaction, lots of gold for us, I'm here as backup if things go poorly. Why would he look up? "

Vax rubs his arms, still toeing at the dirt underfoot. One of his boots, she notices, has a sole that's flapping a bit loose at the edge. His hair is still unevenly cut from his last visit to the city. It's been long enough since their last job that she supposes they're both looking a little ragged. He sighs. "Just be careful."

"You won't even know I'm here. Besides, Trinket's also here to help."

Vax looks past her with a wince, and she follows his gaze to see Trinket, wedged between the edge of two branches and the trunk of the tree, fast asleep. "I am so relieved," he says. "I know exactly how sharp that bear's teeth are."

"He only bit you the one time," Vex says. "And you deserved it, yelling at him like you did."

"There was a bear in our camp!" Vax says, his voice pitching higher with each word. "It was a little bit alarming!"

"Don't listen to your uncle," Vex tells Trinket, who snorts a snore in response.

"You are so fucking weird," Vax says, but he's doing a terrible job of hiding his smile. "I think we should probably practice being nice and quiet while this asshole is on approach. If he suspects you're up there, things could go south very quickly."

"I've got your back." But she has to look away at the worried glance he shoots her way. He always looks so like their father when he's being serious. He's been weirdly earnest since the poachers, more gentle than usual for all his rough edges and general shit-headedness. It's not like she ever told him anything about what happened; for all he knows, she spent that time wandering the forest and inexplicably picking up a stray bear cub. But he always knows, somehow, when something's wrong. Her whole life, she's never had to tell him a damn thing.

Vax sighs and finally looks away, swinging his arms, and bends to the edge of the small lake, skipping stones across its glassy surface. From her bird's-eye view, Vex counts the jumps, the ripples in the water, and tries not to think about how much her legs are cramping with the effort of keeping her in the damn tree. Trinket gives another low rumble of a snore, and she shushes him. A few minutes pass. Her foot falls asleep, and she has to nock her arrow again when she flails her arms trying to keep her balance.

And then, finally, there's a rustle in the underbrush, in the fallen leaves, and Vax whirls around so fast he nearly loses his balance, making an abortive grab for the knife in his belt. After a moment, he clears his throat and straightens, making a visible effort to regain some semblance of composure. Smooth.

The newcomer matches Vax's description of Hornsby, the man he'd dealt with in town: human, tall, muscular, wearing rich-looking chainmail armor, a coin purse hanging ostentatiously from his belt. Vex eyes it up calculatingly, figures it to be considerably short of the agreed-upon amount. Fuck. She twitches her hand to break some of the chill settling in, swallows hard, and sets her jaw.

"Hornsby," Vax says, his voice taking on an unfamiliar inflection, honey-smooth and wheedling and a little higher-pitched than his usual drawl. Together with his shorter hair and baggy clothing, the voice makes him seem a few years younger than he is, makes him look barely into his teens. It's a neat trick she's never really seen him use before. "You're later than we agreed."

"Got held up unavoidably," Hornsby says, tugging off his riding gloves. "And you can imagine how heartbroken I was to realize I was delaying someone as important as some little halfie street-kid piece of shit."

"I can only imagine," Vax says, hunching his shoulders. "I see you have new gloves."

Hornsby gives him a strange look. "Yes. I lost one of the other pair on the road. How kind of you to notice."

"What can I say? I have an eye for pretty things." Vax uncrosses his arms to run a hand back through his messily shorn hair, a nervous motion that's completely unfamiliar to her, probably carefully calculated. She thinks, uneasily, that she'll have a hard time recognizing her brother one of these days. "Well, do you want the amulet or not? I could probably get a better price for it in town."

"Unlikely," Hornsby says, with a sniff, and pushes his gloves into his belt, drawing out the coin purse and, after a moment's hesitation, drawing the longsword from his side with his other hand. Vex inhales, feels her hands starting to shake. "Indulge a businessman his paranoia, kid. I don't plan on cleaning blood off this sword tonight. Just move nice and slow. Show me the amulet."

Vax glances at the purse, carefully avoids looking at the sword, and pulls out the amulet, holding it up between thumb and forefinger. "No need to panic. It was right where you said it would be. The former owner is none the wiser."

"Hand it over," Hornsby says, tossing the coin purse to Vax's feet. "No sudden moves."

Vax nudges the purse with his boot. "Seems a little light," he says. Vex inhales, drawing back her arrow.

"Times are tough," Hornsby says, with a shrug. For a moment Vex is arrested by the sight of the late-afternoon sun glinting off his blade. Behind her, Trinket is now awake, judging by his soft, low growl. "Heartbreaking. You know how it is. Take it or leave it, kid."

After only a moment's hesitation, Vax tosses him the amulet; Hornsby snatches it out of the air one-handed, without lowering his sword, and stuffs it hastily into his belt. Vax grins at the awkward fumbling. "No need for dramatics, Hornsby. Just understand that I may be less inclined to deal with you in the future if you keep shitting on me like this."

Hornsby gives him an exaggerated bow. "Of course. Your pathetic wellbeing is something that concerns me a great deal. I may lose sleep over it."

Vax takes a step forward, over the discarded coin purse. "Perhaps you should," he says. "My daggers are rather good at finding their marks."

Vex inhales sharply, because that's a boldfaced fucking lie: of the two of them, she's the only killer. What the hell does he think he's doing?

"But I'll tell you what," Vax says. Another step. "You promise to make it up to me next time, with interest, and our arrangement can continue. If you have something else you need, I can get it for you. And in the meantime, I can make sure that your initialed riding glove—the one I lifted from your belt at our last encounter and so carelessly left at the scene of the crime—does not find its way into the possession of the amulet's former owner anytime soon."

Hornsby blinks and actually takes a step back when Vax holds out his hand. "You little shit," he says. Vex blows out a breath, taking aim with her arrow, trying to relax the screaming tension in her shoulder. But Hornsby just shakes his head, smiling. "That's good. That's really good, kid. That's a classic tactic."

"I thought it might go over well." Vax tilts his outstretched hand palm-up. "Do we have a deal?"

Hornsby hesitates, then steps forward, gripping Vax's hand in a tight clasp. "We do. If you don't mind some constructive criticism, do you know which other tactic you should consider employing next time?" Vex, watching from her tree, sees Hornsby's smile shift, quicksilver. Too slow. "A dead man's switch."

His grip on Vax's hand slides up his arm, clenching tighter, drawing him in, and for a moment Vex is so fixated on the way her brother flinches that she doesn't see the flash of light on the sword until Hornsby plunges it into Vax's gut.

There's a silence, a little gasp as Hornsby drags Vax down to the hilt of the blade. Vax reaches out, a horrifying look of confusion crossing his face, and paws aimlessly at the front of Hornsby's tunic, like he's reaching for something.

By the time Hornsby grabs Vax by the shoulder and pushes him off the blade, Vex has gathered enough breath to scream.

She fires even as Hornsby turns, but the shot goes wide, the arrow clattering against a nearby tree. Vax looks up at her, sharply, still somehow standing despite the billowing darkness rapidly staining his tunic, still somehow fumbling for the dagger at his side. Hornsby draws his own bloodied sword back, starts a swing aimed squarely at her brother's neck—

Vex draws a little knife from her belt and jumps.

She lands on Hornsby's back with enough force to make him stumble, with enough force that her muscles shriek a protest, and without thought, without hesitation, she plunges her knife into his throat.

The heat of the blood across the back of her hand is familiar. Hornsby grabs her wrist so hard she feels something crack, but she clenches her fist around the hilt, tries to leverage herself against his body to drive the knife deeper. Hears a yell, sharp and horrified, in her memory. Drives the knife deeper. Feels the bottom dropping out from the world, the softer voices raised in anger, her brother looking on in horror. Drives the knife deeper, until it strikes the place she wants, where the blood floods from the wound with his heartbeat, where his grip on her wrist falters and falls away.

Hornsby chokes and sputters and dies. He falls like a tree, and she stumbles away from him on rubbery legs, knife dropping from her spasming hand, and vomits into the dried leaves.

When she looks up, her brother is still standing, swaying on his feet. "Vax," she says, softly, barely a whisper. "Vax!" She pushes to her feet, grabs him, feels the heat of the blood on the front and the back of him, the too-quick fluttering of his heartbeat. His eyelids flicker, and she pulls him down to the ground. He falls with her, heavy in her arms, shuddering. "You're all right," she says. "You're okay, you're okay."

"He's dead," Vax says, between breaths. His eyes are wide. She can feel him trembling. "You were amazing. I couldn't have..." He inhales sharply as she tugs at his blood-soaked tunic, trying to get a better look at the wound, and then he's gasping more than breathing, quick and desperate, face contorting with pain.

"Sorry," Vex says, drawing back, carding her shaking, bloodied fingers through his hair. "Sorry, I didn't mean to, just keep breathing, you're all right."

"Vex." There's sweat on his brow, a visible effort involved in meeting her eyes. "It's okay. I'm sorry. It's okay. You're not going to be alone. You have Trinket. I love you, I just—" He gasps again, and she gasps with him as his grip tightens on her injured wrist.

"Shut up," she says. "Just shut up, okay?" She knows a bit about, about things, about things like this, she knows a gut-wound like this is supposed to be a slow death, but he's gone so pale, he's breathing so quickly, and there's so much blood, bright and pulsing against her hand. She looks around, desperate, matching his gasps with her own sobbed breathing.

He clenches his hand tighter to get her to look back at him, but his grip starts to go slack again almost immediately. His voice wavers. "It doesn't hurt, Stubby. I'm not afraid."

"Vax," she says. "Let go."

He blinks at her. "What?"

She yanks free of his weakening grasp, moves away from him on the gore-spattered grass, and, as though in a dream, reaches to Hornsby's belt. A small flask. Familiar red liquid. For a moment, her vision blurs and sharpens, and she chokes out a laugh. "He was carrying a healing potion."

Vax, neck craned to watch her, exhales and lets his head thump back against the ground. "Oh, good. Because it really does fucking hurt, and I really was fucking afraid."

Vex laughs again, a little too loudly. "I know. But it was a good lie." She swipes tears and blood out of her eyes, unstoppers the potion, checks its contents with a cautious sniff, and pours it unceremoniously down Vax's throat.

He coughs, shudders, and finally slumps back, pale and sweating and trembling but _alive_. Once she can convince her body to start moving again, she peels aside his tunic, tacky with drying blood, and finds the wounds sealed, a small scar just to the right of his belly button, a matching scar in the small of his back.

Shaking, she sits next to him on the grass, grabs him, and pulls him into a hug. He laughs into her shoulder. She rolls her eyes. "Oh, shut up. What the fuck were you thinking, trying to extort him?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Vax mumbles. She can feel the dampness on his cheek, pressed into her tunic. "You jumped out of that fucking tree like some sort of hero."

"It hurt a bit," Vex says, and glances over the top of his head just in time to see Trinket, still halfway up the tree, snap through a couple of branches and tumble to the ground. He straightens up almost immediately, shaking out his fur, and she laughs until she's pretty sure she's crying again. "Oh, darling. Come here."

Vax lifts his head and starts to pull away, but she keeps one arm around his shoulders, keeps him close until he sighs and slumps against her. "He's a good nephew," he says, voice slurring with exhaustion. "And he'll be a good protector. Just has to grow up a little bit first, is all."

Trinket noses up to Vex, grumbles until she reaches out to scratch him on the head, then licks the blood off the palm of her hand.

Vax grimaces. "That's sort of disgusting, though."

"He's a very fierce hunter," Vex says. "It's only natural."

They're quiet a bit longer, until Vex feels her brother's trembling start to still under her arm, until she feels his breathing start to even out, and then he says, softly, "No bullshit, Vex'ahlia. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she says. Feels the warmth of Trinket's fur beside her. Feels the warmth of Hornsby's blood over her hand, the warmth of the poachers' blood over her hand.

He pulls his head up from her shoulder, gives her that open, earnest, worried look again, this time tinged with an uncomfortable undercurrent of awe. "You can talk to me. You know that, right? When you're ready?"

"It doesn't hurt," she says, softly. "I'm not afraid."

He looks at her a moment longer, then shakes his head, whispers, "It's a good lie," and lets her pull him back into a hug.

There's work to be done, she knows, a body to dispose of, a bag of gold to collect, blood to wash, wounds to dress, consequences to face. Before that, though, she's content to sit among the fallen leaves and measure out the quiet rhythm of her brother's breathing. Just for a little while, it'll be enough.

* * *

 

**ii.**

Winter in Whitestone doesn't seem nearly as cold and oppressive when everyone's time is spent preparing for the Winter's Crest festival rather than fighting zombies and vampires and ghosts. Funny how that works out.

Still, Vex thinks, gripping grimly to a tree branch so chilled it may as well be made of sheer ice, the way everyone's been avoiding each other lately, there are more than enough cold shoulders to go around.

Beneath her, Trinket gives a worried whuff of breath, and she leans back to wave to him. "Darling, I'm all right," she calls down, and watches a passerby stop to stare. She supposes she makes quite a sight: one of the famed heroes of the rebellion, dressed in relative finery borrowed from Cassandra, gamely clawing and scrabbling her way to the very top of the Sun Tree. But it's something she's wanted to do for some time, now that the world has gone quiet around her again, at least for a little while. The air here is cold, too crisp to remind her of home, and the newness of it is strangely refreshing.

She settles herself among sharp, pointed branches, gnarled knots in the wood, and rests her back against the trunk of the tree. Someone's seen to removing the last vestiges of rope from around the thickest branches.

Shivering, she draws her knees up to her chin and stares out at what she can see of the city. For all their efforts—and for all of Grog's remarkable lifting capabilities—there's still a lot of rubble that lingers. Percy's been uncharacteristically optimistic about the reconstruction efforts, but she remembers the ruins of Byroden, after the attack, remembers the way the whole town just seemed to evaporate around that invasive void, slowly, by inches.

"Vex?"

She starts out of a reverie, rubbing the goosebumps from her arms. "Keyleth," she says, and leans down to see her scratching the back of Trinket's ears. The thought of talking, of Talking, makes her stomach turn, and she pulls back. "If you don't mind, I think I'd like to be alone."

"Oh," says Keyleth, the hurt plain in her voice; it's like she makes no effort to hide her emotions. Something she has in common with Vex's damn brother. "Sorry. I, um. I just wanted to see how you're doing. It feels like it's been a while, and it really scared me to see you like that, down there in the room with the..." She trails off; Vex glances down to see her rubbing her eyes with the palm of her hand. "Sorry, Vex. I'm not very good at this. I'll leave you alone."

Vex sighs, heavily. Below her, Trinket rumbles and rolls onto his back for a belly-rub. "Fine," she says. "If you want to talk, I'm not going to stop you."

Keyleth stays quiet for a bit, rubbing Trinket's belly, then takes a running start to grab the lowest branch of the Sun Tree, and swings nimbly from branch to branch until she's just below Vex, with a surety of movement that seems more than a little bit unfair. "Hi," she says, a little breathlessly. Vex just stares at her.

"Sorry," Keyleth says, again, visibly tamping down her smile. "It's just, we've all sort of been avoiding each other lately. It's good to see you."

"Everyone's busy with the preparations for the Winter's Crest festival," Vex says, aware of how weak the excuse seems considering she's, well, sitting in a tree doing nothing. "We've all been through a lot, lately. Sometimes you just need a little time to think."

"I know," Keyleth says. "Are you—" She pauses, fidgets with the hair that's fallen in front of her eyes. "Are you okay, Vex? When I saw you fall, I really thought you were dead, and now this whole thing with, I mean. I don't want to lose you as a friend."

The earnestness in her face is plain enough that Vex has to look away. "I'm all right," she says.

Keyleth cuts in before she can continue. "Really? Because you don't look okay."

Startled, Vex glances back at her, really looks for the first time. Keyleth's eyes are shadowed, a little sunken, her skin a little paler than usual. Her hair's knotted along one side where she's clearly been braiding it as a nervous habit. Vex sighs, shifts over. "Come on up here," she says, patting the branch next to her. "Your hair's a mess."

Keyleth hesitates, then swings up and settles next to her, and Vex starts combing her fingers through the braid, pulling it loose. "Thanks," Keyleth says, her face flushing. "Thanks, Vex."

Vex swears softly. "Were you actually tying your hair in knots?"

"I mean, it's a nervous habit. I usually just go Minxie for a while if it gets too bad. Clears up when I transform back."

"That's... weirdly convenient and inconvenient at the same time." Vex hums, picking at a particularly tight knot. She's all ready to chastise Keyleth for squirming, but so far she's keeping perfectly still. Of course she is.

After a few moments, Keyleth says, thoughtfully, "It's been a long time since I had friends," and Vex winces, because this sounds a whole lot like the kind of Talk she's been trying to avoid. But Keyleth leaves it at that, lets the statement hang in the air like their breath in the cold, until the silence stretches just a bit too long.

Vex shifts, finger-combs through a few tangled strands, and surprises herself by breaking the silence first. "Same here," she says. "I mean, I always had Vax, but that was... I guess that was it, kind of. There were other kids in the village, but not—" She catches herself, trails off.

"But not in Syngorn," says Keyleth. "I'm sorry. "

Vex pauses, pushing a bit of hair behind Keyleth's ear. Not as pointed as an elf's, not as rounded as a human's. And yet Keyleth is respected among her people. Has a title. The surge of envy is bowled over almost immediately by a wash of shame, and Vex has to pause for a moment to still the tremble in her hands.

"All right," she says, all false cheer. "So what's your sob story, then? I would've thought someone like you would have had plenty of friends growing up."

"I mean, I did," Keyleth says, and visibly stops herself from reaching up to put more knots in her hair. "And then I guess I sort of found out I was going to lead my people, and suddenly it was studying all day, and maybe a little bit of resentment. I was never a very good student." She makes a quick gesture with one hand, reminiscent of claws. "Always learned better by doing than by reading. But after that I stopped having time for anything that wasn't, well. Important."

Vex sighs, grabs Keyleth by the shoulder, and shakes her a little. "Friends are important, Keyleth."

Keyleth glances back at her, smiling. "I know."

Vex squints at her, then pulls her hand back and draws her legs up to her chest, balancing precariously. "Kinda walked into that one, didn't I?"

"Little bit, yeah. Is my hair okay?"

"Looks fine," Vex says, shortly. Her brother's always been better at doing people's hair, anyway.

Keyleth leans over to elbow her. "Hey. Don't you start changing on me, too. Everyone's been so different since... well, since everything that happened."

"We did some terrible things," Vex says. "Percy was..."

"I know what Percy was starting to become. And he isn't that, not anymore. We made sure it didn't take him."

Vex stretches a hand out in front of her, blocking out the sun that creeps low against the horizon, looks at the way the light burns through skin and outlines bone and sinew. Blood-red. "There'll be scars. Not all of us can turn into a saber-toothed tiger when things get too complicated to fix."

"I mean, that's pretty much a one-problem solution. Just fixes the hair thing, is all." Keyleth smiles, a bit uncertainly, at her exasperated huff of breath. "But I get where you're going with that. I think maybe we've just got to make sure we're there for each other when we need it. And that we say things like, you know, I'm worried about you, I hope you'll be okay."

Vex is silent a moment, then says, still staring at her hand, "I'm worried about you. I hope you'll be okay."

"I guess that's what I'm trying to say, too." The branch shifts next to her, and by the time Vex glances over, Keyleth is already picking her way back down to the bottom of the tree. "Come find me in town if you want to grab a drink sometime before the festival. Or don't. Hide away for as long as you need." She grunts as she hits the ground; perfect landing. She looks up at Vex. "Nothing has to change."

Vex reaches out, presses a thumbnail against the edge of a single small, green bud of a leaf on the branch next to her. By the time she looks back down, the chill settling firmly against her shoulders like a mantle, Keyleth is gone.

Trinket stares up at her, grumbling with worry. "I know," she says, rubbing her arms to get some feeling back into them. "I know. This is such a strange city. You start to imagine that if you stay in one place for long enough you might just die."

She leaves, eventually, clambers down stiff-limbed and aching from her perch to sling an arm around Trinket's neck and let him lead her back to the castle, but before she does, she lingers a moment longer to watch the sun sink below the icy peaks of the mountains.

* * *

 

**iii.**

There's an ache in her gut, a heaviness like a bruise that weighs her down and down and down into a grave of earth, no matter how high she flies. She turns Fenthras over in her hands, feels it shift like vines struggling and writhing against her fingertips, like ropes snaking around her limbs, pulling her deeper and deeper.

It's quiet, tonight, the silence broken with the occasional hums and chirps of springtime insects. Below her, the door to Scanlan's mansion glows faintly like a fire on a hearth; she averts her gaze from the warmth, looks up through the highest spindly branches of the tree to the clear night sky overhead, to the spray of stars. The bow on her lap shifts, faintly, in time with her thoughts, a strange, orphaned relic of betrayal after betrayal.

Her fingers tighten around it, protectively, possessively, and she sighs at herself, tilting her head back with a thump against the trunk of the tree. She feels sick, shaky. The wounds from Saundor's arrows have mostly healed, but she catches herself pressing her palm against them from time to time, like she's still trying to stanch the bleeding, and when she closes her eyes she hears his voice, an inhuman roar, _You stay DOWN_.

(She hears his voice, a wheedling whisper, _I could give you the means to protect them_.)

She hears an entirely different voice say, "And here I always thought your brother was the broody one."

She jumps so badly she nearly topples off her branch, and she's partway through reaching for her broom by the time her reeling brain identifies the voice. " _Scanlan_?"

He is, improbably, standing on a branch just across from her, grinning a little nervously. "Hi."

Vex blinks at him, looks up, looks down. Looks at him again. "How the hell did you get up here?"

He sniffs. "I'll have you know I'm an excellent climber."

"You used Dimension Door."

"And I used Dimension Door." He shifts his weight, glances down, blanches a bit at their height above the forest floor. "Anyway," he says, voice cracking on the word, "I saw you sneaking out of the mansion and thought I should probably follow."

"That's a little creepy," Vex says, slinging Fenthras back over her shoulder.

"So's that bow," Scanlan says. "Don't get me wrong, it's really cool and all, but it's obvious how badly it's freaking you out. You haven't been sleeping well, have you?"

Vex stares at him, so stunned that all she can think to say is: "How did you know?"

"Someone's gotta pay attention to these things. You all live in your own heads too much, honestly. And you're not as subtle as you think."

"So you blew a spell to come up here and insult me? Thanks, Scanlan."

Scanlan snorts. "I'm saying I've been having nightmares ever since the last time I saw Kaylie, okay? I know the signs."

Vex sighs, rubbing at her forehead with the palm of one hand. "I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "It is what it is. That's the only thing keeping me from running back after her: I know I can do more to keep her safe by fighting big fuck-off dragons. I know we're doing the right thing."

Vex feels a chill, sees Saundor's face in her memory, vines and branches interleaving over strangely elven eyes.

Scanlan waits for her to look back at him; she hadn't realized she'd looked away. "So what's with the bow?"

"It's not the bow," Vex says. Scanlan cocks his head to one side. "Seriously! The bow's fine. It's just..." She pulls Fenthras off her shoulder, holds it out in front of her. "Do you think he might have given it freely, if I'd listened? Surely I should've been willing to make that sacrifice. But he's right, I'm selfish, I've always been—"

"You're really upset," he says, sounding startled, and all she can muster in response is a teary-eyed glower. "I'm sorry. But that's crap, and you know it. He wanted your heart. To the best of my knowledge, it's kind of hard to go on living without one."

"I'm sure he meant that as a metaphor."

"Yeah, well, the same sentiment applies." Scanlan settles down, a little nervously, in the crook of a branch. "You gotta stop torturing yourself for doing the right thing."

She turns the bow to one side, feeling the eerily perfect weight of it adjusting to her grasp. "It doesn't feel like the right thing, sometimes."

"Never said it was the _easy_ thing." Scanlan rests his chin on the heel of his hand. "Listen, I'm a little older than all of you—"

"You always say that. How much older?"

"Older. And I've figured out that the only constant is that terrible things are gonna happen to you and everyone you love, and no amount of good can outweigh that level of bad."

"Wow, Scanlan," Vex says. "Thanks for the pick-me-up."

He grins, teeth glinting white in the darkness. "Sure. But the point is that you have no control over most of the bad stuff, so you might as well do what you can to control your reaction to it. You can curl up in a ball or hide up in a tree and push away the people who care, or you can start flinging yourself against the walls of this bottomless pit on the off-chance you'll climb out someday. And if you don't think you're worth the trouble, you can find someone else and help them. It's all shit, but if it piles high enough you might just be able to use it to climb out of the hole."

Vex stares at him; even Fenthras' shifting stills for a moment. "That's simultaneously disgusting, depressing, and inspiring."

"I'm nothing if not predictable." Scanlan drums his fingers against the side of his face for a moment, still watching her thoughtfully. "If it helps, lie to yourself. Say it's gonna get better, say it doesn't hurt. Just keep saying it."

Vex snorts. "If you tell the same lie long enough, you start forgetting it's a lie?"

"That's the idea, anyway. If the lie's good enough." Scanlan smiles. "And I forgive you."

Her breath catches in her throat. "Forgive me? For what?"

"For not wearing the hat when it's clear you used the broom to get up here." He sighs, casting his eyes toward the heavens with a look of pious patience. "Such a betrayal of our very honorable deal! But I'm kind and magnanimous and also, incidentally, super hung—"

"You _fuck_ ," Vex says, and then she's laughing too hard to say anything else, curling around the bow in her lap, feeling the heaviness inside her shift like something living, curious, hopeful.

"Well," Scanlan says, sounding a little startled at her reaction. "Don't fall out of the tree or anything."

Vex swipes the back of her hand across her nose, still giggling, and settles back with a sigh against the trunk of the tree, looking up at the spray of stars between the branches above her.

"You should get some rest," Scanlan says, into the silence that follows. "At least try. We need you keeping an eye on us from the friendly skies. And beating the shit out of a dragon is gonna make you feel better."

"Someone has to keep your sorry asses out of trouble," Vex says. "Thanks, Scanlan. I owe you one."

"Honestly, it's probably for the best that I've stopped keeping track of how many you owe me," Scanlan says. "After all, what are friends for?"

With a wink and a flare of purple light, he vanishes, leaving her alone to stare at the stars with the twisting and coiling of her weapon, the twisting and coiling of her mind.

* * *

 

**iv.**

The summer night's warm and full of life, the campfire lending a red-tinged glow to the perpetual shifting of shadows, the starlight swallowed by the brilliant warmth of a full moon.

It's been a long time since they've felt safe enough to camp out in the open, to sit unguarded with smoke billowing from a fire. The world's changed so much, Vex thinks, but this hasn't: friends drinking and laughing and shouting defiance against the encroaching dark.

She sits apart, on the highest solid branch of the tallest tree, and stares at the moon until its light seems to blur and soften, until even her elven night-vision fades into the comforting, flickering darkness of her human heritage.

_(Art by the incomparable[TriaElf9](https://twitter.com/triaelf9).)_

Grog says something, down below, and Percy's voice rises in protest, and the ensuing wave of laughter washes over her, overwhelming even at this distance in its ardent sincerity. For a moment, there's a panic that jolts her to her core, the relentless drum of memory conjuring cold hands and warm blood and staring eyes.

A quiet voice, below, says, "All right, Stubby?" and she glances down to see that her brother has moved away from the laughing, bickering group to stand under her tree. She can tell by the flush of his face, visible even in the dim light, that he's partaken in more than a little bit of the cask of ale making its way around the fire, but now he's making an effort to stand straight and to school his face to the expression of earnest worry that always puts a lump in her throat.

"I love you all so much," she says, softly, because honesty is the only thing that feels right under the eeriness of the moonlight, under the crackling warmth of another wave of laughter around the fire. "I love you so much, and it's kind of the worst."

"Yeah," he says. "It really is, isn't it?" There's a moment's hesitation that breaks her heart, just a little—he never used to be unsure with her—and then he pulls himself up, slowly, branch by branch, until they're sitting side by side. "Hardly seems fair," he says, swinging his legs.

"I've seen all of you dead or dying," Vex says, her voice small and catching somewhere in her chest. "Sometimes I hate that I care so much."

Vax leans his weight into her shoulder with a heavy sigh, jostling her. "Speaking as someone in a close, personal relationship with death—"

"Okay, it really sounds weird when you put it that way."

"—shut up, snarky. _Speaking_ as me, I think that's the way it's supposed to be, unless you're some sort of monster."

Vex shivers at the memory of a cold, cold touch. "People do monstrous things for love."

"Monstrous people do monstrous things for all sorts of reasons. Doesn't have anything to do with love." He elbows her in the ribs. "We're not monsters, Stubby. And if we are, we're the charming, likeable types, so that's probably all right."

Vex snorts and elbows him back, hitting a ticklish spot; he yelps and flails his arms to keep his balance. "Probably," she says. "I suppose 'probably' will have to be good enough."

He makes as though to muss up her hair, then pauses, pushing a few strands behind her ear instead. "C'mon. Sit by the fire."

"Someone should really keep watch."

"Vex."

She looks at her brother, really looks at him for the first time in months, and sees a young man flushed and smiling a little crookedly; a stranger, almost, with none of the characteristic dourness that so resembles their father. But when his grin widens reflexively at another explosive burst of laughter around the campfire, she sees it in a flash, recognizes it for the first time.

Vax has their mother's smile.

She pulls him into a hug, buries her face in his shoulder until the tears stop prickling at the corners of her eyes, and feels him take a slow, shaky breath. "I wish I knew what to say, Stubby. I feel like I never know what to say."

She pulls back, smiles at his bewildered expression. "It doesn't hurt," she says, tapping him on the cheek, "and I'm not afraid. It's a good lie. C'mon."

His brow furrows, but before he can speak, she grabs him and tips them both off the branch.

It's an absolute disaster; he reflexively tries to spread his wings, they snap a half-dozen branches on the way down, and she scratches up her shoulder trying to keep hold of him. But they land mostly unharmed in a heap of leaves and feathers, both laughing breathlessly, and the ground is solid underneath her, warm and comforting. Grog lumbers over to check on them, yanking them both to their feet with dizzying speed and giving Vax a little push so he topples over again, and from over by the fire she hears Percy grumbling something about "actual _children_ ," and next to him there's a swat and Pike's gentle scolding, and Keyleth is giggling uncontrollably, and Scanlan is surreptitiously trying to take her cup of ale away without her noticing, and Vex smiles, helplessly.

It's different, down here, and a part of her is still concerned; someone could sneak up on them and they'd never know. But for now, for tonight, she's content to pretend otherwise, to drink and laugh and shout defiance against the encroaching dark. In this moment, in this brief, impossible instant, they're safe.

Love and fear exist side-by-side, she thinks, and it's patently unfair that contentment always comes with the knowledge of its eventual end. But hopelessness and terror and loss end, too, and even in the night the moonlight digs furrows through the darkness.

She sits with her family, among comforting shadows, and measures out the quiet rhythm of her breathing. For now, in this moment, it's enough.


End file.
